Ph.D. in Linguistics with a Concentration in African Languages and Linguistics
Africa is one of the most linguistically heterogeneous regions in the world, home to roughly 1,800 to 2,000 distinct languages, which accounts for nearly one-third of all human languages. African Linguistics is the formal scientific study of the languages spoken on the African continent. Because of this large number of languages spoken in Africa, African linguistics does not just focus on documenting individual languages; it also explores how such languages are structured, how they historically evolved, and how they shape and are shaped by African societies and their communicational mores.
African linguistics has fundamentally challenged western-centric notions of how human language works. By studying these languages, researchers gain considerable insights into cognitive science, anthropology, human migration history, and the rich cultural heritage of the continent.
Given that our Linguistics department has a long history of research in and teaching of languages from all over Africa, we offer a doctoral concentration specifically to support students who are developing expertise in linguistic inquiry into African languages. The Program, though similar to the general Ph.D. program, requires engagement in offerings specifically targeting African linguistics, and is administered by our faculty who are leaders in the study of the languages of Africa. Doctoral students, pursuing the African Languages and Linguistics track develop research (methodological and analytical) skills needed to investigate any aspect of their studied African language.
Given that our PhD Program is one of the most established and respected worldwide, our students develop expertise in many intradisciplinary areas, ranging from the phonetics of uncommon sounds, vowel harmony types, and consonant mutation to noun and verb morphology (including noun class and concord, reduplication, compounding, etc.), serial verb constructions, negation and focus marking, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, ethnopragmatics and language description and documentation.
The College of Arts